Israel police grill Jewish suspect in Arab murders: media

JERUSALEM- Israeli police have arrested a Jewish man suspected of stabbing to death two Palestinians and attempting to kill others in a string of attacks during the late 1990s, local media said on Wednesday.
They identified him as Haim Pearlman, 29, a former West Bank settler now living in the religious community of Givat Washington in central Israel.

They said he was arrested on Tuesday but publication of the news was blocked by a court order until Wednesday evening.
Police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld confirmed the arrest but said he could give only limited details.
"Haim Pearlman was arrested yesterday by the Jerusalem police as part of an ongoing investigation," Rosenfeld told AFP. "He was arrested on suspicion of murder, attempted murder and illegal possession of weapons."
Israeli news websites said Pearlman was a member of the banned racist, anti-Arab Kach group, which advocates the forcible expulsion of all Arabs from the biblical "Greater Israel."
They said he had served jail time in the past for assaulting Palestinians and had also been questioned by police earlier this year over "wanted" posters bearing the pictures of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Defence Minister Ehud Barak which were put up on the streets of Tel Aviv.
Settlers frequently clash with Palestinians in the West Bank but killings are rare. The most infamous incident was the 1994 massacre of 29 Palestinians by a radical American-born settler in a mosque in the West Bank town of Hebron.
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